Send Your Church Service into Zoom or Teams with NDI

When a livestream isn’t enough

A livestream is one-way. Some ministry needs to be two-way:

• Homebound and hospitalized members who want to be greeted by name
• Hybrid small groups that watch the sermon, then discuss it together
• Prayer meetings with people joining from home
• Board, elder and business meetings with remote members
• Classes and trainings with remote participants

Those happen on Zoom or Microsoft Teams. The usual fix is a laptop with its webcam pointed at the stage. It looks and sounds poor.

The NDI way: your production becomes a webcam

The free NDI Tools include a virtual webcam:

• Windows: NDI Webcam Input
• Mac: NDI Virtual Input

It takes any NDI source, like your program feed from vMix or OBS, and presents it to the computer as a webcam. In Zoom or Teams, choose it as the camera. Now your remote members see the real camera shots and slides, and with audio set up, hear the real mix.

How to set it up

1. Make sure your program feed is on the network as NDI. vMix and OBS (with the free DistroAV plugin) can both output NDI.
2. On the Zoom computer, install the free NDI Tools.
3. Open Webcam Input (Windows) or Virtual Input (Mac) and choose the program feed.
4. In Zoom or Teams, pick the NDI virtual camera as the video source.
5. Set up audio. Send the stream mix to the Zoom computer, either through the NDI audio or a USB feed from the sound board, and choose it as the microphone. Turn off Zoom’s noise suppression for music.
6. Test with a friend at home before the first meeting.

Tips

• Use a second computer for Zoom. Keep the streaming computer focused on the stream.
• Wire it. Use a network cable for the Zoom computer, too.
• Assign a host. Someone in the room should watch the Zoom side, admit people and unmute questions.
• Bring them back the other way. To put a Zoom participant on the screens or the stream, see NDI over the internet for cleaner ways to bring remote people in.

Part of a bigger picture

NDI makes the church’s video available everywhere it’s needed: the stream, the overflow room, the lobby and now the Zoom call, all from one system. See more on our NDI for churches page.

Want this built into your setup? Map your current system, add a note about the meetings you run, and we’ll show you the simplest way to connect them.